About

Hello! My name is Clare, I live near London and I have been running this blog since March 2012.

It may not come as a surprise to you that I like books and I read quite a lot of them – mostly contemporary, literary and translated fiction and non-fiction covering history, politics and popular science amongst other things. I shadowed the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 and 2017, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2017 and the Wellcome Book Prize shortlist in 2018 and 2019.

I run this blog as a hobby and I don’t earn money from it. I never post content produced by other sources and I don’t accept review requests directly from authors.

You can contact me at alittleblogofbooks (at) gmail (dot) com or follow me on Twitter at @littleblogbooks Please note that I have a full-time job not related to publishing and I may not be able to reply very quickly. And please don’t subscribe me to your mailing list without my permission.

Thanks for visiting my blog. Great to share books with others! Good luck with your studies… when I did my PhD my fiction reading went out the window. Sad times. I’m happier now, my “education” half-forgotten but the joy of reading resuscitated!

Thanks for the like on the Hunger Games mini-review I posted recently. Also saw yours on Carrie – if you like King, I wrote a slightly longer piece on his most recent, The Wind in the Keyhole here: http://wp.me/p1CVFj-9y.

Keep up the good work- I love books, too, and read as often as I can, but don’t get the time to write about them as much as I like. My largely unread blog is split between music and books that I like, and has been more heavily weighted toward the music end of the see-saw of late.

I’m helping Kat Lee, author of the new Desperate Measures Trilogy do some promotion for her newest book (I’m her mom and business partner!). We’d love to have you review it on your blog, if you have room in your TBR pile. Kat Lee is also known as Elle Casey, YA Fantasy author. Links to her work are below. The book can be sent to you in the following formats: .mobi, .epub, .pdf.

Congrats on pressuring your Masters. Not a lot of people can do that now a days. Don’t worry about what you’ll do when you’re done. It will all fall into place and EVERYTHING happens for a reason. Thanks for the like on my blog.

Hi. Don’t know whether you’re a man or a woman but it really doesn’t matter. In case you care, I’m an Italian man from Rome. Most important, I think we share several books. Definitely Murakami and McEwan. I like good contemporary stories and I like to read ’em in original. Any advice for some good British fiction apart from the usual names?

I’ve just found your blog (thanks to freshly pressed!) and it looks really good 🙂 having looked through your reading list it seems we have pretty similar reading tastes (I love Murakami too, but haven’t yet started on the epic 1Q84…). Look forward to reading more!

I’m so excited to have found your blog – I look forward to wading through your many posts. As we are awash in a sea of mediocrity and bad writing (mine especially), finding a great blog like yours is cause for celebration!

Thanks for stopping by and posting a like on my blog. I dropped by to return the favour, but was so impressed with the content that it took me all of three seconds to hit the “follow” button. I’m looking forward to reading lots more from your little corner of the world.

I love, love, love that you focus on modern fiction, there is is this recent obsession with “classics” (aka the canon) and only reading them, completely ignoring there are authors writing at the moment who are as great as Dickens. Good for you, we see eye to eye 😀

Thankyou for liking my book review! I have a couple more coming so stay tuned! Love looking through your blog, it reminds me of the days before I was a student, back when I was still able to take pleasure in reading and not see it as a chore. These days I enjoy stories best when they are read to me as audiobooks, get to listen and absorb rather than feeling like its a test!

Thank you for stopping by my blog. I am still plodding through Kaltenburg (Marcel Beyer) and 2013 Best European Fiction edited by Aleksander Hemon. Not sure if I will make it through I have just started The Book of Jonas (Stephen Dau), The Water Children (Anne Berry) and Chapman’s Odyssey (Paul Bailey), which are all a delight so far.

I am thankful to you for liking a post on my blog. Through this I have now learned of your blog and can stalk it all I want (which I mean in a good way only :-)). So far it is really nice – you got me with Murakami & tea 🙂

Thanks so much for visiting Bookshelf: for the intellectually curious and posting a like. Great to have bibliophiles writing about literature and books. Had a chance to read some of your posts: some great articles here. Will look forward to visiting again.

Just found your blog and like what I’ve read so far. I’ll be receiving your posts via email, and am looking forward to reading your thoughts about some of the books on your upcoming list. Good luck on your Masters work. I did one of those several years back and am still trying to figure out what to do with it!

Thank you for liking my post on The White Tiger. I like Haruki Murakami too. 1Q84 is great, and even What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is inspiration, because I do races. I’ll be back and do drop by my blog again!

Thanks for stopping by “Bookshelf: for the intellectually curious” and posting a like. Book lovers are at the heart of the most interesting blogs — creating discussion around the themes that matter most, and eschewing the mindless prattle found on network television and the never-ending vampire-themed novels. Enjoyed reading your posts and look forward to your future musings on all things literary. Cheers.

Greetiings from Singapore. Thanks for visiting my blog and ‘like’ When We Were Orphans. Have you read this book? I see that you are also an avid reader, trust I can find a lots of good reading stuff here. All the Best to your Master’s 😀

Oh no – I was enjoying your blog SO much – but now I find you hate avocados! Having just this minute finished a delicious lunch including a whole avocado – I like them FAR too much to just have a half – departs, more in sorrow than in anger (don’t worry, I’ll be back!)

Your blog looks wonderful!
I love reading, but often find that I simply don’t have enough time anymore, unless the book is really gripping, in which case I throw all caution to the wind and read the night away, to my own detriment at work the next day :p
I’m also a Yorkshire Tea girl, myself 🙂

I’m glad I found you. Living in the US, I miss out on the UK books that are selling at home that might not make it over here. For this reason I love airport shopping. So I’ll just tune in here. Although what you could possibly have against avocados I’ll never know.

Thanks for stopping by my site and introducing me to yours. I like some of the same authors you do. Also like Yorkshire tea and am addicted to crossword puzzles. Except I am huge fan of avocados and just finished a bowl of guacamole 🙂

I too review books that I read on my blog, but I cannot imagine the speed with which you do it. I would need a lot of time for “Luminaries”. Just finished Carlos Fuentes “The Death of Artemio Cruz” which I recommend. Now reading some lighter fare (Anne Enright; Lydia Millet). I don’t read romance, most poetry, mystery, and most science fiction. Otherwise, fiction and non-fiction- but well written. If you have the time, you might take a look.

Thanks for stopping by my blog yesterday! Really glad to have found yours and looking forward to discovering some new authors. Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan are also huge favourites of mine, along with Kate Atkinson and Tracy Chevalier. But I could do with some new names 🙂

Hello you’ve probably never heard of my blog before but your reviews are great! I love reading also. I have nominated you for the Liebster Award, which is basically WordPress getting bloggers to know each other. My site is thesweetreview.com, go on it for more details. You’ve got a new follower.

Thanks for stopping by my blog at Brenda’s Bookshelf! Appreciated browsing through your blog and found several books we have both read and had similar reactions too- The Goldfinch, The Circle among others. Look forward to reading more of your reviews in the future!

Hello, fledgling blogger here with the intention to build a bookish corner of my own and muse on books among other matters of living (as if reading and loving books happens in a vacuum). Currently those other matters are looming large with only one bookish rave on my blog but i like the tone and scope of your literary interests. I am in Canada but I seem to relate most strongly to readers in the UK, maybe because discovering the Guardian books podcast was like a light in the dark. Sorry for the long note to say hi but I look forward to exploring your space further.

I’ve just stumbled across your blog, and I love it!
It looks like we share a similar taste in books (I also love a good unreliable narrator), so I look forward to reading more of your reviews.
Keep up the great work!

Hi! Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your book blog – it’s a really valuable resource when picking what to read next from the towering pile beside my bed! I’ve made you my Featured Blog on my blog’s main page. Hope I send a few extra readers your way 🙂

Hi, just read your latest post and will link you to my next post as knew nothing about the World Book Night and am fascinated by the idea – doing to earmark it for next year in good time. Thanks again, Clare, see that we both like lists and am reading through the Baileys’ shortlist – read your comments on “How to Be Both” and am hoping my story starts with George’s. Nice reading you, bye for now, Nicola

Hello! I just stumbled onto your blog, and I absolutely love it. I definitely share your fascination with Kazuo Ishiguro – he’s bursting with such creative and beautiful ways to express things.
Perhaps you’d like Ruth Ozeki’s novel too?
Anyhow, I just wanted to show my support (from halfway across the world)!
Best,
Akanksha

OOOOOoooo!! A fellow Murakami lover! I think I’m going to like your blog and recommendations! I am fairly new in the book blogging scene and have yet to find people with similar tastes in books! I’m glad I found you (I literally typed “bloggers who review haruki murakami books” inside Google search… that’s how desperate I was ;p